1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of determining a multi factor temperature index that is better indicative of the weather conditions that influence how warm or cold a person feels. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a method and system for determining a multi factor temperature index based on specified weather parameters representative of weather conditions that influence how warm or cold a person feels.
2. Description of the Related Art
The actual temperature recorded by a temperature measuring device is only one indicator of how comfortable a person feels. Other weather conditions significantly influence the comfort level felt by a person.
Although temperature is the most popular weather indicator used to communicate the weather conditions, the temperature by itself is often not a sufficiently good indicator of how comfortable a person really feels. The comfort level that a person really feels is a composite of several other weather conditions such as, for example, the wind, humidity, solar intensity, cloudiness, precipitation, atmospheric pressure and elevation.
Therefore, the actual measured temperature by itself provides only one indicia of how comfortable a person would feel under any weather conditions. Other measures such as wind chill or heat index include the temperature and one other element, such as wind speed or humidity. Furthermore, many of these existing indexes are designed to measure effects on inanimate objects rather than a clothed person. Therefore, these indexes do not provide a good indication of how the weather “really feels” to a normally clothed person.
Therefore, known temperature based indexes of weather conditions do not give an accurate feel of the weather conditions to a normally clothed person. Furthermore, none of the existing temperature based indexes include more than one other weather parameter other than the actual temperature. Therefore, current temperature based indexes do not actually represent how hot or cold a normally clothed person feels based on the totality of the weather conditions that influence the feel in addition to the measured actual temperature.